The state pension won’t suddenly stop, will it?

[TeapotCollection]

I’m 51. We were talking about pensions at work and someone who’s about to retire said there’d probably be no state pension when I retire

This can’t happen can it? I can imagine the government saying in a few years that anyone born after <date> won’t get it but surely it can’t suddenly stop?

Yes, I have an allegedly cushty desk job (self employed accountant), but even though it's not physically demanding, it's mentally draining. I'm just pushing 60, but don't have an adequate pension, so plan to continue working until I drop really, certainly until state retirement age. But for the last few years, I've known I'm "past" doing the complex tax planning work which requires a lot of concentrating, studying tax law, attending long boring tax conferences etc., so I've been actively winding down the tax side of the business and building up the "easier" work, such as book-keeping, and will probably stop doing tax work completely shortly. Yes, the book-keeping is far lower value, so my income will drop considerably, but at least it means I can carry on working and earning "something" rather than just giving it all up because my mind can't cope with the complex, ever changing, tax work anymore.

Oh and for those of us in our 50s particularly women, we started our working lives with the belief that we would be retiring age 60, so hadn't necessarily given much thought to alternative careers or side hustles.

I think it will.

Actually what I think will happen is what is happening now with occupational pensions.

I receive an occupational pension for ill health retirement, the amount I receive is £ for £ taken off my Universal Credit.

I paid into my occupational pension, I also have a full NI record so I did the right thing and I'm penalised for it.

I think the same will happen with the state pension.

A while ago I contacted my MP and amongst other things asked if that would happen, she answered all my other points.

A woman who is 59 now has (or should have) known since they were 31 that the retirement age isn’t going to be 60 - that surely would have given enough time to plan?

This is what people who have diligently been paying into auto enrolment will have a problem with if they will still be paying rent in retirement. Housing benefit will be reduced based upon the extra income they have. If the income is modest some renters would have been better off not paying in.

I'm 59, pushing 60. I've known for probably 25 years that state retirement age was being raised.

EDIT: Just checked it was the Pensions Act 1995 which included provision to increase the SPA for women from 60 to 65 in stages between April 2010 and 2020, to bring it into line with that for men.

So for the last 28 years, women have known that their state retirement age was being raised from 60!

Someone now 60 years old, would have known when they were just 32 that they wouldn't be getting their state pension at 60. That's more than adequate time to adapt!

Your colleague seems smug and unpleasant.

If they did scrap the state pension, surely they would have to refund people's NI contributions. That would be a lot of ££ for people that have been working for years already.

Sorry people are absolutely right about the lead time for state pension.
I was actually thinking about my work pension that changes with relatively little notice from being based on final salary, to suddenly being changed to salary as in point in time, meaning my predicted work pension amount reduced significantly. Probably not as pertinent to this discussion, I apologise.

This.

The other problem is menopause. It affects many woman in such a way as to essentially constitute an illness, yet is is not treated or acknowledged as such. Nor is there effective, easily available treatment for anyone suffering. Men don't get the menopause, their bodies also aren't battered by childbirth (which is really not that much of a choice as humans, just like all other living things, are born pre-programmed with the desire to reproduce). It isn't equality to have a retirement age that doesn't take menopause into account. It pisses me off the way problems affecting only women are sidelined by society.

im not even sure half the population realises what the retirement age is now. It's currently 69 for most. I've got 68 and I'm hoping that means I'll be immune to any more raises. I've no idea what WASPI is, I started work in the mid 1990's and got on with navigating the trials and tribulations of life, there wasn't much time left over for current affairs and the news. I grew up watching women retire at 60 and men at 65, nobody spoke of anything different so that's what I expected to happen to me until some time in my 30's when the government suddenly changed it. I can see why they needed to with people living longer but that doesn't make it any less shite when due to health reasons I long for retirement and every year closer I get the government just changes the rules again so it's another year further away. It's quite soul destroying, especially considering the effects of menopause that will come on top of everything else at some point.

The poster above who thinks working in retail is a non-physical Plan B for worn out people has obviously never worked in retail. What seems easy when you're young, fit and healthy often feels rather more difficult when you're older or in poor health. Retraining often means huge expense followed by a massive paycut to start again in a new career, which would make current life unsustainable for many, especially as people have children older now. Someone in their 40s is often in early family life stage, not in DC flying the nest and downsizing phase.

As per a PP, I forsee many more older people needing to claim sick benefits instead of retiring. I also think the suicide rate is likely to go up along with the cost of living and retirement age. It will all combine to push people over the brink. I expect the government won't care about that though if it reduces the number of old people to pay pensions for.

If that's directed at me you've constructed your narrative around something I didn't say or imply. But I'm sure misinterpreting a post about my situation in my post in response to another poster saying who wants to work at 69 made you feel better.

@EasterFlower

The poster above who thinks working in retail is a non-physical Plan B for worn out people has obviously never worked in retail.

You don't work as a builder on a Friday and then find you can't leave your chair on Monday, unless you've had an accident or serious illness.

It's a gradual thing. There will almost certainly be a "wind down" period where a builder can't climb scaffolding etc., but is still perfectly fit and capable enough of a few shifts on the tills in Wickes!

we pay NI in the knowledge we will one day get to claim. The government can't retrospectively change something

Of course it can, and regularly does! Yes, it may be very unpopular with the public, and they'd probably lose the next election if they were stupid enough to do it, but they can if they wish!

Just look at the increasing state retirement ages, and the changes in the qualifying number of years needed to get full state pension, and the introduction of SERPS and S2P which have now been scrapped. Changes happen all the time.

Usually changes are gradual and often planned for years/decades ahead so that the population either don't notice or it's too far away for the people to care, but things DO change.

im not even sure half the population realises what the retirement age is now. It's currently 69 for most. I've got 68 and I'm hoping that means I'll be immune to any more raises.

The maximum retirement age in the UK is 68 at the moment - not to say it won’t increase in the future, but no-one’s retirement age is currently 69, not even people born this year.

No chance it will be sudden. People used to say this when I started work in the early 80s.

In addition to raising the state pension age, what will happen is that successive governemnts will slowly increase the requirements for private pensions, such as workplace pensions. Not fast enough of course, but it will happen.

I expect it to become law eventually that the minimum work pension contribution is 10% from employer and 10% from employee.

Tell the WASPI women that!

Look up the WASPI women. An entire generation of women that had to wait longer for their pensions without notification. My own mother lost over £30k of what had been promised to her.

God yeah menopause. Totally did for me!

any NI payments you have made won't be paying your state pension - that was/is funding the people currently drawing the state pension. The younger generation pay the taxes for yours.

WASPI women DID have decades of notice for the biggest change, i.e. 60 to 65 the law for which was enacted in 1995! It was the increases from 65-66-67 for EVERYONE, men included, that were shorter notice. So the WASPI women knew for decades that they'd be retiring at 65 rather than 60, but for a few less years that rather than 65 it would be 66 or 67!

There was plenty of notice unless they were hiding under rocks. It had been all over the media for years! The original change from 60 to 65 was also notified by letters sent directly to the people affected. Yes, of course, some people wouldn't have received letters (especially if they hadn't themselves bothered to tell HMRC and DWP of address changes), but the widespread coverage in the media spanned many years.

Yes, I grant you less notice and less media attention for the change from 65 to 66 then to 67, but that was the same for men AND women, and the media probably didn't pick up on it enough because a change of just a year isn't quite so much "attention grabbing" as whatever other news stories were ongoing at the time (Brexit etc), but it was still hardly kept secret!

NIC is just another tax, it's not a personal savings scheme and it's not an insurance policy!

Someone who's not paid any NIC but has accumulated years worth of nic "credits" from part time work, carers responsibility exemption, unemployment claims, etc., is entitled to exactly the same state pension as someone who's paid thousands per year in NIC due to being employed in a well paying job for the requisite number of contributory years!

Doubt it but god knows. They've already had to put something in place for people with not enough NI contributions so they get something. I'll be properly pissed after having paid into it since I was 16 if it disappears

I remember when the WASPI thing first started, and thinking, but I've known about this change for years and years, why have they never come across it? It was very well publicised, you'd have to have been living under a rock to miss it.

The consultation about it was in 1991, then a White Paper in 1993, then
legislation passed in 1995. And the increases started in 2010. That was 19 years altogether to hear about it.

I don't know about living under a rock. In 1995 I was leaving school and having a MH breakdown, then working various dead end jobs trying to make ends meet whilst in an abusive relationship for the next 15yrs. I first heard about any of it in 2010 or thereabouts when I discovered I'd be retiring at 65 not 60. I wasn't on social media at all in that time, I didn't read newspapers hardly ever perhaps my mum's daily mail when I visited, I didn't watch the news I was too busy with housework, I listed to pop music on the radio and my mind wandered during any talking parts. Nobody talked about this in the circles I moved in. Not at home, not family, not colleagues, not friends. I've also never seen it anywhere that we're supposed to notify DWP/HMRC when we move house, which I did a lot rarely staying anywhere longer than a few years, this is literally the first I've ever heard of that. So I never received my letter. I really don't think my life was that unusual? There must be lots like me.